-+PCK

=Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK)= This knowledge include knowing ** what teaching approaches fit the content (pedagogy) **, and likewise, knowing **how** elements of the content can be arranged for better teaching.

This knowledge is different from the ** knowledge of a disciplinary expert (content) ** and also from the general pedagogical knowledge shared by teachers across disciplines.

PCK is concerned with the representation and formulation of concepts, pedagogical techniques, knowledge of what makes concepts difficult or easy to learn, knowledge of students' prior knowledge and theories of epistemology.

It also involves knowledge of ** teaching strategies (pedagogy) ** that incorporate appropriate conceptual representations, to address learner difficulties and misconceptions and foster meaningful understanding. It also includes knowledge of what the students bring to the learning situation, knowledge that might be either facilitative or dysfunctional for the particular learning task at hand. This knowledge of students includes their strategies, prior conceptions, misconceptions students are likely to have about a particular domain and potential misapplications of prior knowledge.

PCK represents the **blending of content and pedagogy** into an understanding of how particular aspects of subject matter are organized, adapted, and represented for instruction .At the heart of PCK is the manner in which subject matter is transformed for teaching. This occurs when the teacher interprets the subject matter, finding different ways to represent it and make it accessible to learners.

__Exemplar__ Students tend to have many misconceptions in the area of Electricity. For instance:
 * current gets used up by elements in a circuit
 * a battery is the source of the current
 * a battery supplies a fixed amount of current no matter what is connected in the circuit
 * batteries go flat when all their current is used up
 * current and voltage are not clearly distinguished

The pedagogical approach to elicit and tackle students' misconceptions could be providing handouts which require students to make predictions on the behavior of certain circuit arrangements and students are to identify and rectifying their misconceptions while they are discussing on each other predictions.

Work in pairs and share with each other about some of the pedagogical approaches you have adopted in teaching N(T) Science. Share one of the approaches to the rest of the participants by adding a post in the discussion tab.
 * __Task__ **